Value Assessment Centers of Excellence Established

As a part of its new Value Assessment Initiative, the Foundation has provided support for two new Centers of Excellence that will promote research, innovation, and the development of tools and partnerships that advance value-driven decision making and patient-centered care models.

Centers of Excellence awardees include nonprofit health systems research and consulting organization Altarum (with its core partner, V-BID Health) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, each of which have established centers to promote research, innovation, and the development of tools and partnerships that will advance value-driven decision making and patient-centered care models. The two organizations each have received grants of $500,000 to launch the centers.

Altarum and V-BID Health have announced that the mission of their Health Care Value Research Consortium will be to “promote the pursuit of value in health care delivery in the U.S. by identifying high- and low-value clinical services, tracking the use of such services, helping to ensure that consumer preferences are incorporated in health care decisions. It will work with researchers to identify the strategies that lead to better value, such as health benefit designs that incentivize the use of high-value services and discourage the use of low-value services.”

The University of Maryland, Baltimore has announced that its Center of Excellence for Patient-Driven Value Assessment will be devoted to “promoting the inclusion of diversity in patient voices regarding the elements of value most important to patients.” The vision of the new center, which is based at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, is for “patients and other stakeholders, such as value framework developers and users, to co-produce reliable and meaningful value assessments to support patient-centered health care decision-making.”